To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the business in 1924, the owner of the café and pastry shop, Georg Ferdinand Stude, was photographed with his employees in the café and the production area below.
In this photograph, taken on the ground floor hall, he is with the business’s wait staff and office staff. A copy of this historic photograph made the journey to the other side of the world and miraculously returned home decades later. Thanks to that, we can still admire the rare snapshot today.
One of the women in the photograph fled Estonia at the outbreak of the Second World War and eventually made her way to Australia, taking with the image once taken at her workplace with her. After her death, her friend found this rare photograph among her belongings and decided to send it back to Estonia in the hope that there would be someone who might still recognise the people pictured.
Much had changed in Estonia in the intervening decades. The Soviet occupation had imposed a new regime and the nationalised Georg Stude business was no longer allowed to bear the name of its former owner. Unfortunately, the Australian didn’t know the address of her friend’s former workplace, but she remembered the name Georg Stude. So, she wrote the address on the envelope simply as: Georg Stude’s shop, Tallinn, Estonia. And one day, the letter reached Café Maiasmokk. The name Stude, once famous all over the city and beyond, was evidently still remembered by some of the postal workers…
Photo: Toomas Tuul
Original: Tallinn City Museum